


Nothing like the sun

by nightbloomingcereus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Agnes Nutter's Prophecies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Humor, London goes feral every time the sun comes out, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Canon, Rain, although sometimes angels and demons on earth might as well be from another planet, and I PROMISE there's a happy ending, but set in London not on Venus, inspired by All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury, so much rain, thwarted picnics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23693929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/pseuds/nightbloomingcereus
Summary: Heaven and Hell are both under water.  It's been raining nonstop in London for forty days and forty nights. There is a prophecy that the sun will finally come out for three brief, glorious hours on Thursday at precisely 2:14 pm. Aziraphale and Crowley are finally going on that picnic, but not if some of their former colleagues have anything to say about it.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 65





	Nothing like the sun

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury, which is an absolutely amazing and also incredibly sad short story. You do not need to be familiar with it to read and enjoy this fic. For those who are familiar with the original, I would like to reassure you that my story is a good deal more lighthearted, and has an unequivocally happy ending.

It had been raining for forty days and forty nights. It was not the year 3004 BC but rather 2018 AD, a month and a half after the apocalypse had failed to take place. The Earth (or, well, London anyway) was for the most part not flooded this time around, with the exception of some poorly designed basements and a few low-lying streets near the Thames. 

It had been grey and damp and stormy for forty days and forty nights. Which is to say, it was a typical October in London.

It was decidedly not, however, a typical October in Heaven or in Hell. Several days after the aborted apocalypse, both upstairs and downstairs had somehow found themselves entirely under water. The water coolers in Heaven had begun leaking one afternoon, soaking the shoes of the angels clustered around them. This was initially viewed as a typically passive-aggressive attempt on the part of management to curb workplace gossip, but as the trickles turned into gushing fountains within the hour, it soon became clear that there was something seriously wrong with the plumbing. A day later, the office, with its floor-to-ceiling glass walls and slick modern furniture, resembled a very sterile, very boring, very monochrome aquarium. Although technically none of Heaven's residents actually needed to breathe air, it was nevertheless an unworkable situation: celestial harmonies, for one thing, sounded extremely strange underwater and had the unpleasant side effect of attracting whales[1].

Hell was really only a little damper than usual, for all that the persistent drips of murky water seemed to have turned into gushing drainpipes and the stagnant puddles had grown into lakes. All of the congealed goop on the walls had been washed away, revealing the unsettlingly striated, pinkish-beige walls beneath. This sudden and disturbing cleanliness was a clear violation of Hell's occupational health and safety rules. Dagon, the Lord of the Files, despite being the owner of a pair of gills that had lately become the hottest commodity in Hell, was at the end of her tether. All of the file cabinets had rusted shut and the red ink on the sodden papers was bleeding away like a mortal wound. At any given time, at least half of the ballpoint pens in Hell refused to write despite being full of ink, so she had never been able to enforce the rule that all documents be filled out in red or black waterproof ink. (Blood was also an acceptable option, but demons were notoriously undiscerning when it came to bodily fluids.) In any case, her satisfaction at finally being proven right was vastly outstripped by the sheer panic elicited by the sight of piles upon piles of waterlogged, mushy paper pulp that had once been forms and contracts.

Emergency meetings had been held, both internally and (quietly) with the opposition, focus groups assembled, and advisory committees convened. (One positive effect of the floods was that all of the red tape had been washed away, and so these things happened with a degree of alacrity that was frankly shocking.) As Ark-building materials were in short supply both upstairs and downstairs, all of the erstwhile residents of Heaven and Hell had migrated en masse to Earth. Although the corporations departments on both sides unexpectedly found themselves, both literally and figuratively, under water, everyone managed to acquire a corporation, if not necessarily a unique one[2], in short order. As the only terrestrial city with which any of the senior leadership had any passing familiarity in the last century, London quite suddenly found itself home to the Heavenly Host and the Demonic Hordes, both of whom were entirely unimpressed upon arrival to discover its reputation for terrible weather. Heaven's upper management was ensconced at the Savoy, and Hell's at the St. Pancras. (The Ritz had, apparently, been fully booked for weeks, so nobody had been lucky enough to snag a room there.) The rest of the rank-and-file angels and demons were relegated to any number of the interchangeable, unremarkable hotels in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport that were far too expensive for what they were, a little bit run-down, and entirely ubiquitous. To add insult to injury, they were all required to commute into the city center daily on the cramped, slow, unreliable Tube, the Heathrow Express being far too dear for lowly office drones on celestial and occult pay scales that lacked a cost-of-living adjustment. 

Both sides had set up temporary bases of operations at the Heaven and Hell office building in the City of London; the ground floor was technically the only part of the building that was actually located on Earth, and consequently the only one that was not currently flooded. The lobby had become a sort of corporate refugee camp, with makeshift offices of hastily erected, flimsy cubicles on either side of a central atrium, which contained a wholly superfluous and ridiculous water feature that everyone hated because it sounded too much like rain for comfort, a Costa stand that sold mediocre coffee that was simultaneously too bitter and too weak, a pair of out-of-order escalators, and a variety of (fake) potted plants which had never once failed to invoke Crowley's ire. This resulted in a great number of uncomfortable coffee-line situations, mysteriously vanishing office supplies, and the occasional fraternization incident behind the particularly large plastic ficus trees in the hallway next to the loos. 

The weather in London alternated between a chilly, spitting drizzle and an all-out torrential downpour. The sky was permanently hung with dark, heavy, low thunderheads, and a dense fog lingered persistently over the Thames day in and day out. Perhaps once or twice a day, the clouds would lighten a few shades from slate to pewter and then, after five minutes during which hopes soared for a glimpse of blue, would close ranks again, twice as dark and ominous and mocking as before. All Hellfire was immediately quenched and any Holy Water diluted into nothingness by the sheer amount of rainwater. This was probably the only reason there had not yet been an altercation with any consequences worse than a severe discorporation since the move. (They were officially under a flag of truce here on Earth, which had been temporarily declared neutral ground, but it was tacitly acknowledged by both sides that sometimes things would get out of hand. So long as such incidents were handled discreetly and off-the-record, there was no need to involve management.) 

Born and bred Londoners might be used to the constant rain, but angels and demons were most certainly not. Miracles, for some reason, had an essentially negligible effect when faced with the astounding power of the weather to make everyone drenched and miserable. The constant deluge meant that the stratified layers of dirt and grime on Hastur's person and clothing had all literally gone down the drain, leaving him distressingly clean and feeling naked and cranky as a newborn babe. There were unsightly water stains on all of Michael's impeccable dove grey blazers; mud splatters accumulated on her pale suede spats far more quickly than she could miracle them away. It was a common sight these days to encounter anywhere from one to three Erics bemoaning the state of their hair with all the blessed humidity. Gabriel and Beelzebub flung verbal spars and dagger eyes at one another from either side of narrow alleyways. Sandalphon was in a perpetual and very heated fight with an umbrella that insisted on turning itself inside out with each gust of wind. These and countless other small irritations took on mythic proportions against the grey and gloomy atmosphere. Needless to say, nearly everyone was grumpy, short-tempered, and more than a little damp, and tensions were high, although senior leadership on both sides were privately relieved that everyone was too busy complaining about the weather to remember that they were supposed to be angry about the indefinitely-delayed Apocalypse. 

For the record, umbrellas still worked just fine, as did a good Mackintosh, as any Londoner with half a measure of common sense could tell you. Water did still roll off the ducks' backs, but even they seemed to have thrown in the proverbial towel and abandoned the pond in Saint James Park, waddling squelchily off to more sheltered locales. It wasn't like any of their normal sources of food were still coming to the park anyway: the various international intelligence agents had all sloped off to the British museum, and Aziraphale and Crowley's visits had grown few and far between. And besides, nobody, not even waterfowl, likes an excessively waterlogged piece of bread.

Even Aziraphale, who had made his home in London for well over two hundred years and was well familiar with her dismal climes, was beginning to grow weary of the incessant rain. While it was certainly nice to sit in the cozy back room of the bookshop with a cup of miracle-hot tea and a hefty tome or two while the rain drummed rhythmically on the oculus overhead, he missed his walks to the park to feed the ducks (and the excuse to spend time with his favorite demon). He was tired of being splashed by buses throwing up veritable walls of water every time he stepped off the curb. The parade of poor, dripping, soaked humans entering his bookshop looking for some temporary reprieve from the driving rain was dreadfully tiresome. His angelic nature would not let him deny them refuge (although it did nothing to prevent him from closing shop an hour early); accordingly, he was forced to suffer through the indignity of allowing dripping umbrellas and soggy trouser hems and rain-slicked coats near his precious books. Worst of all, the people, having nothing else to do but browse the shelves, sometimes turned into much-dreaded _paying customers_.

Moreover, the rain had started, inconveniently, just as he was finalizing his plans and gathering his bravery for a long-overdue gesture of some import, one that required a sunny day to be perfect.

Crowley was, put quite simply, out-and-out cranky. He was not at all fond of damp, gloomy places at the best of times, and when the entire city seemed to have turned into one, it was impossible to escape. The lash of the rain against the windows of his flat made him too irritable to sleep. The squeak of the Bentley's windshield wipers and the way the sidewalks became slick and treacherous wore on his nerves. The Bentley had taken to playing _Rain Must Fall_ over and over again, and even demonic powers could not defeat the horror that was London traffic in the rain. And the less said about wet denim, the better. 

One might reasonably ask why in someone's name Crowley had chosen to settle in London. The answer was, of course, that he hated London and its miserable weather in much the same way that he hated tartan and magic tricks and fussy French pastries.

While rain did conjure up pleasant memories of being sheltered under Aziraphale's wing on the walls of Eden, that had been a brief, if tumultuous, storm, bracketed on both sides by sunlight, nothing like this sustained gloom and chill and damp. Six thousand years later, he did not think that Aziraphale would open his wings for him again; there had been too much history and too many secrets in between then and now. Even now, after they had weathered an apocalypse and a discorporation and two trials together, there was a tension between them, a sense of things left unfinished and words left unsaid. There were moments that had passed in which he wished he had said something, pushed for some conclusion: on the bus from Tadfield to London, on a park bench with their hands still clasped together after switching back, the quiet space after two glasses clinked together and eyes met at the Ritz. But those moments had come and gone, and you could read so much into a look or a casual touch that wasn't there. He still did not know for certain whether Aziraphale knew how he felt, and whether that feeling was reciprocated. He wondered if he would ever know; with every missed moment, every missed opportunity, the prospect of simply _telling_ the angel how he felt grew more daunting.

This entire sad, soggy state of affairs was probably the Antichrist's doing, although nobody could really be certain. The Original Flood had, after all, come straight from the top. There was also a sizeable quorum on both sides of the aisle in support of the notion that Aziraphale and Crowley were somehow to blame, despite the inarguable fact that controlling the weather across entire planes of existence was something no angel or demon had the power to do, much less a mere Principality and Tempter.

It must be said, furthermore, that there was one village in Southern England that resolutely remained, as it had been for the last eleven-odd years, pleasantly sunny, with a refreshing breeze and fluffy clouds that looked like sheep (being chased by flying saucers and sea monsters, naturally). It did occasionally storm mightily, complete with howling winds and forked purple lightning, in the vicinity of Hogback Wood, but these dramatic downpours tended to occur only briefly around mid-afternoon and always cleared up before dinner time. But unless one happened to be lucky enough to live there, one would find that all roads to Tadfield would mysteriously turn in on themselves and dump one right back onto the perpetual grind of the M25. Tadfield and its never-ending summer might as well have been on Venus, for all the good it did the denizens, both permanent and temporary, of London.

On the thirty-seventh day, a moist, miserable Monday, there was a prophecy, one both nice and accurate.

> _On the fortieth day, at the fourteenth minute of the fourteenth hour, there shalle come a golden light, a brightnesse, a blazing glory. A coyne large enough to buye the world with. Good for three hours only! No extensions! And two and two opposed shalle sette the chains, and one and one together may break the chains._

The angels found the message inside the Gideon bibles in their bedside drawers, inscribed on scraps of paper tucked in like bookmarks right next to the section on the flood; this was perhaps a little too on point, but someone who could see the future was surely aware that angels were not inclined to subtlety. The demons found it scrawled on crumpled napkins with suspicious stains inside the hotel room mini-bars that they were raiding for midnight snacks. Aziraphale heard it when the BBC Radio 3 broadcast of the London Philharmonic concert was interrupted unceremoniously by a special report; he was feeling quite put-out at the sudden interruption until he recognized the unmistakable cadences of prophecy. Crowley (along with the humans) glanced at his phone and saw a breaking news alert that predicted with one hundred percent confidence (if highly questionable spelling and grammar) a sudden, unexpected clearing of the storm for a brief period of exactly three hours on Thursday afternoon starting at 2:14 pm.

In Tadfield, Anathema Device, who did not own a bible nor a mini-bar, and whose once-smart phone had been more or less permanently decommissioned due to the continued proximity of one Newton Pulsifer, remained unaware of this new prophecy for some time. When she was finally informed of it (by R. P. Tyler, unsurprisingly; most of the other residents of Tadfield, which was currently enjoying clear skies and a crisp autumn breeze, did not spare it more than a passing thought), she found herself feeling somewhat at odds.

She might not have wanted the burden of additional prophecies, but it still felt like a slap in the face, an unpardonable slight, that Agnes had deemed literally every other person in the country more worthy of receiving the prophecy than her own descendant, Anathema mused sulkily to Newt over dinner that evening. 

"Think of it this way," said Newt pragmatically, "Now we know it worked, burning the prophecies. No more professional descendant." 

"I guess when you put it like that, it doesn't sound so bad. No more being beholden to four hundred year old prophecies."

But old habits died hard, and she couldn't help but spend the remainder of the evening trying to analyze it. "It sounds like a test, doesn't it? A riddle. It's about more than just the rains stopping. I know Agnes. There's always something deeper. Three hours of sunlight in which to do something important. The chains are probably metaphorical."

"Anathema," said Newt, "This one's not for you. She'd have sent it to you if she'd wanted you to do something about it. Let it lie."

"You're right," she said, and made the conscious choice to go to bed and stop thinking about it. It was, after all, none of her business, as Agnes had made very clear.

As it turned out, there _was_ something deeper, although the chains were unfortunately _not_ metaphorical. Someone really should have anticipated that devastating combination of the literal and the metaphorical, given Agnes' track record. But, as it also turned out, no one had given the details of the prophecy much thought until it was too late. Even Aziraphale, collector of prophecies and compulsive analyzer of minutiae, had become fixated on the first part, the obvious part, the part about the sun coming out. Five long weeks of constant rain would do that to anyone, especially an angel with unpleasant memories of the last time it had rained for this long.

As the citizens of London have done for time immemorial, every time the sun comes out for so much as half an hour, picnics appear as if materialized out of the ether, aspirational sundresses and slightly too-snug shorts are donned, and long-abandoned cigarette habits are reacquired just so office workers will have an excuse to leave their buildings. The difference this time was that people had time to _plan._ Sundresses were purchased and picnic baskets unearthed from the depths of pantries; cigarette sales soared. Even the angels and demons seemed to have gotten into the spirit; both Gabriel and Beelzebub had abruptly cancelled previously planned mandatory all-hands meetings for that afternoon. 

Aziraphale was busy planning a lovely picnic in Saint James Park; his picnic basket had been dusted off and kept in a state of readiness since the previous day, fully stocked with several bottles of wine, a special, celebratory bottle of champagne, a dozen plump, shucked oysters[3], crepes with lemon and burnt sugar, and a sumptuous selection of decadent pastries, cured meats, and fine cheeses, all miraculously kept in a pristine state of freshness. He'd even found the perfect spot for the picnic: a secluded area along the far bank of the duck pond that featured a large, flat outcropping of rock open to the sky. It was perfect for a serpent, or a man-shaped serpentine demon, to lounge upon in the sun and soak up the warmth. 

He had been, in truth, thinking about going on a picnic with Crowley ever since he'd mentioned it in 1967, but it had never seemed like the right time. They'd always been recovering from some misunderstanding, or too busy trying to prevent the world from ending, or perhaps just too afraid. The idea of a picnic had taken on mythic proportions. In 1967, he'd meant it as a way to say what couldn't be said: _You are precious to me._ Now, fifty-one years and an Apocalypse later, he thought that he might finally be ready to say it out loud, terrifying and enormous as it was. He had gone so far as to scout out locations and plan the perfect menu. But then it had started inconveniently raining, and raining, and raining, and everything had to be put on hold. The appearance of a mysterious prophecy at precisely this time _should_ have rung some warning bells, but instead had simply brought the idea of the picnic to the forefront of his mind again. He'd called Crowley up immediately, before he could lose his nerve. The demon had stammered something incoherent and then said, a little sarcastically, "took you long enough, angel," but had nevertheless accepted the invitation with the endearing, telltale lisp in his voice that revealed he was not quite as cool and collected as he wished to seem. They had agreed to meet at their customary place beside the pond at two o'clock sharp, which would give them plenty of time to make their way to Aziraphale's carefully-chosen picnic spot and get situated before the much-vaunted appearance of the sun. 

Approximately one hour before the appointed time, Aziraphale, with a happy smile on his face, emerged from the Harrod's food hall carrying a paper bag containing a most delectable sticky toffee pudding with whipped cream, which was to be the finishing touch on his al fresco feast. He ducked across the street to the Tube. Ordinarily the walk back to his shop was a pleasant ramble of a little over half an hour, cutting through Hyde Park and meandering through Mayfair, but as the rain was currently not falling so much as flying horizontally in sheets through the air, he judged it prudent to take the Piccadilly Line, if only to save the sticky toffee pudding the indignity of getting wet. 

He made his way down the stairs into the station, tapped his Oyster Card against the reader, and went through the gate. Several moments later, four other individuals followed. All four of them evaded their fares. Hastur and Dagon, being demons, deliberately chose not to pay. Michael and Sandalphon swept blithely through the gates, having no idea of the existence of subway fares or Oyster Cards and only a vague idea of what the Tube actually was. In their (very weak) defense, none of them were there to actually take a ride on a train.

The station was musty and damp and unpleasantly odiferous; it was bustling with people anxious to finish their errands or skipping out of work early in order to make the most of the much-anticipated three hour window of sunlight that afternoon. In the way of all riders of public transit everywhere, everyone studiously stared at their phones or at the ground and did their best to avoid making eye contact. Unsurprisingly, then, not a single one of them noticed as four human shaped beings manhandled a fifth one away from the waiting crowd and through an unlabeled metal door at the far end of the platform.

Beyond the door was an access tunnel that had not been used for some time; it led off into the darkness and eventually emerged into the long-abandoned and sealed-off Brompton Road station. The only light was a dim glow from where they had entered.

Hastur led the way. Dagon and Sandalphon followed, dragging a struggling Aziraphale bodily and none too gently along the corridor. Michael trailed behind, carrying a torch that looked electric but was in fact powered by ethereal righteousness.

"Still say we should've held out for Crowley," groused Hastur. Behind him, Sandalphon leered triumphantly at his back and yanked extra hard on Aziraphale's arm.

Before Sandalphon could say anything inflammatory, Michael cut in quickly, "Where do you think the snake got that holy water from? You know this will hurt him more. We are taking away the one thing he cares for most."

"I hope you know where you're going," she added, grimacing and trying not to step in anything squishy.

"Been comin' down here a lot," said Hastur. He trailed a hand along the damp, muck-covered walls, licked his fingers experimentally, and reached up to rub their blackened tips lovingly against the frog nestled in his disheveled hair. "Feels like home."

"Can we hurry it up here, Hastur?" demanded Dagon irritably. "I really don't want to get caught and have to explain what we're doing to Lord Beelzebub. Our two sides are officially supposed to be under a flag of truce up here."

"Seems to me they should be pleased to see us all workin' together to solve our shared problems, all truce-like and everything. 'Sides, that one there ain't one of yours, just like Crawly ain't one of ours anymore," said Hastur.

"Trust me," said Michael, rolling her eyes, "The Lord of the Flies is too busy with other things just now to care about us. Gabriel sent out an emergency memo this morning that he had a last-minute _delicate situation_ pop up that required his _immediate attention_ , and that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. We all know what _that_ means. No one's going to be paying attention until at least tomorrow afternoon."

"Nothin' delicate about _that_ situation," snorted Hastur.

"I caught him sneaking out the office this morning, carrying a garment bag and an overnight bag," said Sandalphon. He made a constipated-looking face. "He was _whistling._ "

Michael muttered something that sounded like, "As if he's going to be wearing clothes where he's going," then said loudly,"Fishface is right though. Let's hurry it up. I'm sure we've all got better places to be. The sooner this is over and done with, the better."

Approximately halfway down the tunnel, Hastur wrenched open a rusty door with a loud screech, revealing a bare room the size of a large closet, which had clearly not been used for some time. Dagon and Sandalphon unceremoniously hauled Aziraphale into the small room; letting go of his arms, they shoved him hard so that he fell forward on his hands and knees on the dusty ground. Sandalphon aimed a vicious kick at the back of his thighs for good measure, making good use of the discreet steel toes hidden inside his spiffy, refined derbies and eliciting a sharp gasp of pain from Aziraphale.

Before Aziraphale could recover, the angels and demons had retreated. The room fell into darkness as the door clanged shut. He heard the clank of bolts and padlocks and chains sliding into place, noises that he hadn't heard at such proximity for well over two hundred years. From the sound of it, it seemed they were using every fastener they could possibly miracle up. There was a dull, greyish glow emanating from what looked like a webwork of faint, metallic lines crisscrossing the door's surface.

Back in 1793, his miracles had been rationed, shamed into quietude. Now, after everything that had happened, he felt no obligation to restrain himself, and there were no humans around to shock. He could break any earthly restraints with a combination of physical strength and divine miracle. He picked himself up gingerly, wincing a little at the bruise against the back of his thigh, and wincing more than a little at the soiled and torn state of the knees of his trousers. He manifested a weak halo-light, limped to the door, and examined it. From up close and with more light, the grey lines resolved into a series of heavy iron chains, studded here and there with clunky padlocks that did not appear to have keyholes. In places, the chain went directly through the solid steel of the door, leaving no gaps; it defied the laws of physics but made perfect sense from a metaphysical perspective. He pressed a hand against the handle, which, unsurprisingly, did not budge. There was a buzzing, like pent-up static electricity, that stung his palm and set his teeth on edge. It was not the incandescent, fizzing holiness that he associated with the execution of angelic miracles, nor was it the searing, too-hot-to-touch occult energy that all demons who were not Crowley seemed to emanate when they exercised their own powers. No, it was instead some kind of mixture of the two, a volatile, clashing, inharmonious combination of angelic and demonic miracle wound together into the links of the chain. He could, he thought, untangle and pull out the one but not the other, or break the physical chain with his angelic strength. Doing either of those things, though, was liable to throw off the balance of the entire thing; the resulting explosion might cause the door to open, but not without the very real possibility of his own discorporation. Equally worrisome, there would likely be dire consequences for the station and all of the people in and above it. He sighed and sat back against the dusty wall, putting his head in his hands, and attempted to come up with a solution to his dilemma. Perhaps he could wait until nighttime, when the station would be closed and the number of people out in the surrounding streets fewer.

He withdrew his pocket watch and squinted at the face in the dim light. It was 2:15 pm. If the prophecy was accurate, the sun would have just emerged a minute ago, a bright and glorious thing. He thought of Crowley, who would be waiting in the park for him now, while the clouds parted and the sun shone down from overhead. Crowley, who would surely think that Aziraphale had left him high and dry yet again. It always went the same way: Aziraphale swallowed his words, swallowed his love, turned his back, ruthlessly plastered over the cracks in his heart with fear and obedience, and walked away without looking back. He'd wanted to look back every time, had always been too afraid to see the look on Crowley's face. Saint James Park in 1862, Soho in 1967, the bandstand only a couple of months ago – there was a pattern, and there was no reason for Crowley to think that this time was any different.

The irony of the whole situation was fitting, he thought bitterly: the angel trapped underground, the demon in the sunlight. Both alone.

* * *

Their deed done, two angels and two demons emerged from the station into the driving rain and made for the greener pastures of Hyde Park across the street. They split off into their respective sides almost immediately. The rain was going to stop any minute now, after all, and it wouldn't do to have their brief enjoyment of the sunshine ruined by the presence of unsavory elements.

Just as Agnes had predicted, at exactly 2:14 pm the rains stopped and the clouds split apart, mercury-edged, revealing a patch of clear blue sky and the burning sphere of the sun in all its remembered, legendary glory. It was jaw-droppingly beautiful. The brightness was stunning, overwhelming even. People spilled into the streets from houses and office buildings and storefronts, cheering and whooping and laughing. Many spontaneous and sincere prayers soared up to Her in those first few minutes (and a good many went down to Lucifer as well). Everyone turned their faces to the sky, and let the heat and the light fall upon them. 

In Hyde Park, Sandalphon let his recalcitrant umbrella drop to the gleaming pavement, cracked his knuckles with satisfaction, and grinned, his gold-capped molar gleaming in the sun. Michael brushed the last of the dust from the underground tunnel from her pristine ruffled cuffs and stepped forward into a beam of white light. Dagon's scales gleamed iridescently in the sudden brightness, mirroring the tiny prisms of the droplets of water on the leaves overhead. Hastur lit a cheap, tarry, odiferous cigarette, rubbed the ashes into his coat, and let the sun bake it in.

Elsewhere, the Archangel Gabriel, Messenger of God, and Lord Beelzebub, Prince of Hell, stepped out onto the balcony of the extravagant penthouse suite at the Saint Pancras Hotel, holding hands and naked as the day they were created, and stared directly into the burning face of the sun with eyes of violet and ice.

Every demon from Hell, and every Angel from Heaven, stopped what they were doing to behold the glory of the sun emerging from behind the clouds for the first time in forty days. All of them, save for one angel, who was currently trapped in a windowless closet far underground, and one demon, who was currently tapping his feet impatiently against the ground and gazing with unfocused eyes at the rippling water of the pond before him.

Aziraphale was late, very late. When he had called two days earlier to invite Crowley on a _picnic_ of all things, there had been a high, wild undertone to his voice, that could equally have bespoken fear or exhilaration, and his words had come out in a rush. Crowley had wondered, then, whether the angel remembered saying " _perhaps we could go on a picnic"_ in much the same tone of voice back in his Bentley in 1967, whether that entire conversation had burned its way into his brain the way it had into Crowley's.

He had said something sarcastic in reply, out of a long-ingrained self-preservation instinct, but had accepted quickly and without protest, unable to keep the hopeful hissing lilt entirely out of his voice. It had been, after all, an invitation more than fifty years in the making.

He wondered, now, with a sick feeling in his stomach, whether the anticipatory note, the feeling of significance, that he thought he had detected in Aziraphale's words had been completely in his head. Perhaps a picnic was just a picnic, and nothing deeper; and perhaps it had meant so little, then and now, to Aziraphale that he had forgotten entirely or else found some better company than one of the Fallen.

If Aziraphale _had_ merely forgotten, he'd most likely be at his shop, perhaps so enthralled in some old book or another that he'd lost track of time. He dialed the bookshop for the third time in five minutes, let it ring out ten, twelve times. No answer. Not at the shop, then. The vague, nauseous feeling in his gut grew stronger.

"He must've gotten cold feet," said Crowley aloud, addressing the boldest of the ducks, who had waddled up onto the bank in search of handouts. "Run away and left me high and dry again."

The mallard quacked. It sounded disappointed, although it was unclear whether the sentiment was because it was dismayed by Crowley's poor powers of deduction, or by the apparent lack of any forthcoming baked goods[4].

"No, you're right. 'S not like the angel to just not show up. He'd call, come up with some excuse. A first edition Milton up for auction, or _Harry the Rabbit's up and vanished again_ , or something."

He swallowed, hard. It was no longer possible to ignore the insistent tug behind his solar plexus, a feeling that was all too familiar from the Bastille and the church and the bookshop fire. The awareness of Aziraphale's presence was always there, a hum at the back of his consciousness, a string tied around his heart. It had been there since Eden, for reasons he had never fully understood. It was both like and unlike his demonic awareness of certain sins: lust, pride, want. Most of the time, it was simply _there_ , muted and pleasant and comforting, although on occasion strong feelings would leak through: panic, worry, indignation. (In 1967, it had been perplexingly been all three of those at once.) He had only felt its absence once, and it had been like a great, hollow hole: cold, drifting ashes left in the aftermath of a great burning.

The signal was there today, for which he was grateful; it was strong and bordering on outright painful. He could sense desperation and prickly frustration, along with a note of what might have been sorrow. It felt slightly muffled, as if coming from far underground. He panicked for a moment, thinking that Aziraphale had somehow, some way, ended up in Hell again. Upon further and more reasonable examination, that particular nightmare scenario seemed highly unlikely, as the beacon was not nearly so weak as it had been the one time that Aziraphale had _actually_ been in Hell. He was most likely, if Crowley was any judge, still in London, and fairly close by at that.

He had, over the years, become quite the expert at triangulating Aziraphale's location using a combination of this psychic sense and his more serpentine talents; he could follow the angel's trail, precisely, to any place on Earth: a prison, a church, the end of the world. Even if Aziraphale was avoiding him, even if he did not wish to be found, he was still in distress and Crowley would go to him. It was what Crowley did, over and over and over again, and what he would always do, because he loved him and always would, whatever the cost to his heart.

He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, just slightly, and let the end of his tongue lengthen and fork, tasting the air. It was not hard to find the particular, familiar combination of earthly appetites and ethereal sanctity that he was looking for. He broke into a run, pushing past crowds of people exclaiming in joy at the long-awaited and much-missed sight of the sun. The trail led him west along Constitution Hill and past Buckingham Palace; the lushly manicured palace gardens were glorious and verdant in the newly-emerged sunlight, but Crowley did not register their beauty at all, so focused was he on reaching Aziraphale. Eventually, he found himself headed down into the Knightsbridge station across from Hyde Park, taking the stairs two at a time; it was cool and dark inside, and the platforms were nearly deserted; nobody in their right mind wanted to be trapped underground during the brief, precious interlude of sunshine and blue skies.

"Angel!" he shouted, his voice echoing, brittle and hollow, down the platform into the darkness. He felt coiled, tense; every bit of him, human and demonic, was stretched taut and tight to the breaking point. "Angel, where are you!?"

There was a door at the end of the inbound platform that stood slightly ajar. He pulled it open and peered inside; it was too dark in the corridor beyond to see anything other than indistinct shadows and the faint suggestion of distance, but he could sense, unmistakably, Aziraphale's presence somewhere in that darkness. He plunged forward, blind and trusting. 

Several hundred feet down the tunnel, he came upon a door on the left side, which was crisscrossed with locks and chains, all vibrating with an excess of angelic and demonic energies. The entire assembly seemed about ready to explode, so conflicting were the numerous miracles layered upon it. The holiness made his skin feel tight and itchy, and the familiar acrid sting of Hellfire burned at the back of his throat. He recognized the tarry, rancid afterimage of Hastur's power, and the slimy, viscous dregs of Dagon's; there were also two distinct holy signatures, whose authors were unfamiliar to him. Ordinarily, that particular cocktail of all the things he'd thought he'd left behind for good after the Apocalypse would have sent him halfway back to the exit by now, but Aziraphale was behind this door. Even if his heart and his tongue had not already told him that with certainty, the number of chains and locks and miracles barring it were a dead giveaway.

"Angel," he said, soft but still loudly enough to be heard through the door. "It's me."

At first he thought the reply was merely an echo, come back from the far reaches of the tunnel to haunt him. But no. It was unmistakably Aziraphale's voice, if rather more shaky than usual.

"Crowley? Crowley! Is that you?"

He heard a few shuffling footsteps and an angelic groan. 

"Angel? Aziraphale! Are you all right?"

"Just a bit sore. It's no bother really. Crowley… Crowley, I didn't think you would come looking for me." Aziraphale's voice sounded closer now. There was a gentle thump, as if the angel was leaning heavily against the door. 

"What? Of course I would come looking for you! You're my-- You're my best friend." _You're my heart_.

"Oh," said Aziraphale softly, and lapsed into silence. After a moment, he said in a steadier voice, "My dear boy, I seem to have found myself in a bit of a pickle."

"A _bit_ of a pickle? More like a whole vat of pickles. Who put all these locks on this door?"

"It was Michael, Sandalphon, Hastur, and Dagon. The locks are a joint effort between all four of them, I think. It feels like quite the mess of different power sources. Rather volatile, if I'm any judge of that sort of thing. I've been trying to sort out how to undo it without setting off some kind of explosive reaction."

"Cut the red wire."

"I'm sorry. What was that? I don't think there _are_ any wires, Crowley."

"Just a saying, Angel. You know, like in the movies… oh, never mind. 'S not important. Let me take a look at this."

He gritted his teeth and prodded gingerly at one of the locks, a large, old-fashioned-looking padlock that held together two heavy links of rusty chain. The ethereal and occult energies within it were clamped around each other like angry teeth, red bleeding through where they met, both unwilling to give an inch. The entire contraption looked like it was about to explode, and messily.

"Angel. Demon. Probably explode," he muttered to himself, half-subconsciously. A memory surfaced, tasting of ash and whiskey. 

Neither one of them alone could break the locks without risking discorporation. The incompatible angelic and demonic miracles holding them together were poised right at a tipping point, and messing with one or the other, even just a little, would knock the entire assembly into explosive disarray. It was a reasonably clever trap, he had to admit.

But what none of the others knew was that it didn't always have to be like oil and water. They'd been inside each other's corporations and, fussy clothing and unfamiliar bones and the relative merits of proper posture aside, it had been an easy, harmonious thing to inhabit Aziraphale's body, a familiar comfort for all that it had never been done before.

You didn't cut the red wire. You cut the black and the white wires simultaneously and with equal and opposite strength.

He explained this to Aziraphale, without mentioning wires. One day soon, after they'd both escaped with their corporations, he'd make Aziraphale sit down with him at his flat and watch the Bond movies. Maybe some _Mission Impossible_ for good measure.

" _And one and one together may break the chains,"_ said Aziraphale. "The prophecy. I should have seen it. Crowley, you brilliant creature!"

Crowley set the palm of his hand flat against the pitted metal of the door, in the space between two sets of chains. He took a deep breath, and said, "Let's do this, then."

"Crowley. Wait," said Aziraphale, a little unsteadily. "Before we do this. If it all goes pear-shaped and one of us gets discorporated, I want you to know-- I need you to know that-- that I love you. I was going to tell you today, at the park. I know this isn't the same, but I just-- I wanted you to know."

The adrenaline and fear in his body was abruptly joined by a trembling exhilaration; he could see the unsteady flutter of his pulse in the blue veins along the back of his hand where it still rested against the door. His heart was beating, suddenly, very hard in his throat, a bird aching for escape or shelter.

He hissed, a low, wordless, urgent, and completely inappropriate response. "Sssshit," he said, letting his weight fall on the hand pressed against the door and clapping the free one to his traitorous mouth.

"I-- I understand if you don't feel the same way, dear," said Aziraphale in a resigned tone. "I just needed to tell you."

Crowley willed his tongue to fuse back into something resembling a human one, something that could form human words, words that were inadequate to the enormity of his feelings but which could at least convey some fraction of sentiment. He swallowed the lump in his throat like it was an apple.

"Nonononono. Angel. _Angel._ _Aziraphale_. Love-- I love you too," he managed to choke out. "It's just, it's _a lot_. Hard to talk when my tongue gets all snakey."

There was an audible, shuddering intake of breath from beyond the door. "Oh," said Aziraphale, his voice small and cracking. "I wish I could see you. Your eyes."

He plucked the sunglasses from his face, one-handed, let them drop to the ground with a clatter, rubbed hard at his stinging eyes. "I know, angel. I know. You will. I promise. We'll get this door open and then you can gaze into my limpid orbs all you like."

" _Limpid orbs?_ You really are ridiculous, you know that, my dear?" Aziraphale giggled, and Crowley pictured the little secret smile that Aziraphale wore when he found something endearing, and felt his own mouth curve up in response.

He imagined he could feel the heat of Aziraphale's palm against his from where they lay pressed against each side of the door, with three inches of metal and a prison's worth of chains and padlocks between them.

"Well," said Aziraphale, "I suppose there's no reason to put off trying to open this door any longer."

"It'll work. It has to. Agnes is never wrong," Crowley replied, grasping hold of one of the dangling loops of chain. He winced at the stinging burn of it, felt angry welts rising up where the links pressed into his skin, but tightened his grip. "On three? One. Two. Three."

They each grabbed one end of the knotted strands of miracle with their minds, Crowley the occult and Aziraphale the ethereal, and _pulled_ , hard and fast. There was a tremendous resistance as the lines drew taut between them. _Please, please, please,_ his heart screamed internally, _God-Satan-Agnes-Someone, let this work. Don't let me lose him again. Don't let me lose him now._

Something _snapped_ , on both planes simultaneously. Quick and hard and sudden and loud, like the pop of a joint coming loose all at once from its socket. And then the heavy chains were falling to the ground, unlinking and unwinding and untangling, turning into fine, narrow, spiderweb wisps as they hit the ground. Before long, they were gone, vanished into the ether, nothing but figments, and the door lay, unmarked and unbarred, before him.

He reached for the handle and it turned easily, with no resistance. The door swung open, and there, on the other side, was Aziraphale, his hand still slightly outstretched, looking at him with wide eyes the shifting, complex color of storm clouds. There was an angry black mark on his palm and smudges of dirt on his coat, his trousers were torn at the knees, and his hair was a wild mess; there was the faintest hint of a halo, glowing slightly, hovering in the air above his head.

"Oh, thank ssssssomeone," Crowley hissed, and rushed forward. In a moment he had Aziraphale in his arms, and Aziraphale had Crowley in his. He didn't speak. He _couldn't_ speak, for his tongue had gone all long and forked and serpentine in his mouth again. He allowed it to, this time, and instead let his hands do the talking. He threaded them through Aziraphale's hair, cradled his head, held tight to the most precious, most beautiful, most beloved thing in his entire world. The skin of Aziraphale's neck, that brief, intimate sliver of it between his still-properly buttoned shirt collar and the back of his hairline, was cool and smooth beneath Crowley's injured palm. 

After several minutes, when the first rush of the jittery adrenaline of relief and joy and love had softened into something a bit more manageable, Crowley, with some reluctance, untangled himself from Aziraphale, unwound his arms from where they were snaked around his back, lifted his face from the soft nest of Aziraphale's hair. His palm was smooth and unblistered, had been since he'd touched Aziraphale's neck. He took a small step back, trying to give the angel a little space, but Aziraphale's hands, unbidden, came forward to find both of his and grasp them tightly. Neither of them, it seemed, could bear to stop touching the other.

He raised Aziraphale's hand to his mouth and pressed his lips against the dark demonic burn there, pushed just a tiny bit of his own power into the skin, felt the roughness there melt back into a pale, perfect, unblemished smoothness. He let his lips linger there for just a moment longer than necessary, the length of an inhale and an exhale into the palm of the angel's hand.

"Oh, but we must be missing all of the sunshine. I know you were so looking forward to it."

"I don't care," said Crowley, truthfully, "Can't think of a single place I'd rather be right now than right here."

He closed the door gently and set his own locks upon it, ones that both of them could easily tug open like a satin bow with a single thought, but which anyone else, angel, demon, or human, would find impossibly convoluted and impenetrable.

"I have sticky toffee pudding," Aziraphale offered, gesturing to a paper bag sitting on the floor, "with whipped cream. We've no tea, or port, to go with it, but it would be a shame for it to go to waste."

"That it would," agreed Crowley. He waved a hand and conjured up a large pile of black silken cushions, luxuriously overstuffed and embroidered with twining snakes in red thread, and a small, low table of elaborately carved, glossy rosewood. The lavish, decadent furnishings were incongruous against the dingy, cracked concrete floor and bare walls of the small room, and Aziraphale pronounced them absolutely perfect. For good measure, he repaired the torn knees of Aziraphale's trousers with a snap, and banished the brown-grey dust smudges on the back of his coat. Aziraphale favored him with a slightly surprised, fond smile. They settled, side by side, their shoulders pressed against each other, into the nest of pillows. Aziraphale opened up the paper bag and withdrew a clear plastic clamshell containing a generous serving of sticky toffee pudding and a small tub of whipped cream. Either of them could have easily miracled up a couple of place settings, complete with fine china and sterling silver flatware, but neither did so. Instead they opted for the curious intimacy of sharing the single flimsy plastic fork, passing it back and forth between bites, hands brushing against each other as they did so. The dessert, despite the plastic cutlery and the lack of proper beverage to accompany it, was rich and dark and decadent. Aziraphale savored every bite just as he did the exquisitely plated, refined confections at the Ritz, with an achingly familiar, slow, rapturous inhale-chew-exhale motion. Crowley watched with an equal amount of wide-eyed rapture. The bakery had thoughtfully included several small, thin paper serviettes, with which Aziraphale made a valiant effort to dab his lips between bites, but which proved entirely unworthy when confronted with caramelized toffee sauce and lashings of cream. There was nothing for it, then, but for Crowley to swipe that last smear of cream from Aziraphale's lower lip with his thumb; there was nothing so natural as for Aziraphale to lean forward ever so slightly and part his lips and take that thumb into his mouth, for just long enough for Crowley to register the shocking warmth and slickness and gentle pressure of it. The thumb against the lips became lips against lips, became tongues tangling against each other, kisses long and lingering and tasting of caramel and cream.

They held each other, and Crowley buried his face in Aziraphale's spun-gold hair, and Aziraphale pressed kisses against the line of Crowley's neck, and Crowley was an uncoiled, boneless thing in Aziraphale's arms, and Aziraphale a warm, solid, substantial one in Crowley's. Aziraphale allowed his wings to unfurl, and he wrapped them around both their bodies where they lay amidst the silken cushions on the dusty concrete; they were soft and white and downy, and smelled like green growing things, like shelter, like Eden. The diffuse light from Aziraphale's halo grew warmer and more golden, like the lamplight in the bookshop's cozy back room on long winter nights. It was nothing like the sun, and a hundred times more precious.

* * *

Right on cue, at precisely 5:14 pm, the clouds closed together overhead, low and dark and heavy, shuttering away the slanted, golden late afternoon light, and the first fat drops of rain splattered onto the still-damp pavement. The Londoners sighed, accepted the inevitable, and went on with their lives. Sandalphon's umbrella turned itself inside out with a mighty whoomph and smacked him square in the face. A particularly vindictive cloud dumped a veritable bucket of rain on Hastur's head, washing away all of his carefully applied dirt and grime. Gabriel and Beelzebub shrugged and went back to bed.

Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed and the rain poured down in relentless sheets.

On the M23 southbound, a vintage Bentley with a picnic basket in the backseat tripped merrily out of London town, playing "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" at top volume[5]. It crossed the M25, which was slow and congested as it always was when it rained, and crested a low hill. On the other side, with London and the infernal orbital motorway out of sight, the clouds split open, and the sun broke through in exuberant, brilliant crepuscular rays. The Bentley gratefully tucked away its windshield wipers. It was the golden hour, bright as the eyes of serpents, bright as new-minted coins, bright as the world in all its glory. Rainclouds hung low and heavy and dark behind them, but in front of them, past the road signs pointing toward Sussex and the South Downs, the sky was wide and endless and blue, all the way to the horizon. 

* * *

[1]Ever since the whole Jonah incident, everyone was rather wary of whales.return to text

[2]You think three Erics is a handful? Try thirty-five of them. For that matter, did you know that Steve-from-celestial-accounting is apparently an octuplet?return to text

[3]Don't try this at home, kids, unless you happen to be an ethereal being to whom the rules of food safety do not apply.return to text

[4]It was a testament to how distracted Crowley really was that he did not take this opportunity to further interrogate the duck in hopes of finally figuring out whether or not it had ears.return to text

[5]The Bentley had tried, it had really, really tried, to play "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles, but sometimes you just can't fight your essential nature no matter how hard you try.return to text

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Shakespeare, Sonnet 130.  
> The line in Agnes' prophecy: "A coyne large enough to buye the world with," is a quote (which I have taken the liberty of Nutterizing) from the original Bradbury story. 
> 
> Come visit me on tumblr at [moondawntreader](https://moondawntreader.tumblr.com).


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